Usual Life in Japan

Superstition in Japan: Believe it or not Believe depending on you

Every culture has its own set of superstitions.
Some are good teaching and some are lacking sensible foundation. But any of them are simply fun and interesting.

In English-spoken world, people give a response ‘bless you!’ whenever they hear someone sneeze. While in many other countries the words for health instead will be thrown, but not in Japan.

When someone sneeze, that’s the sign that someone is talking about you － nicely or badly is unknown.

It may be noticeable how entirely Japanese eat up the dish on the plate. That’s how they are taught.

Or if you can’t, leave neatly instead of leaving it scattered for aesthetic reason at least.
So rice in a bowl, for example, should be eaten up until ‘no single grain’ is left otherwise you will lose your eye sight! A comment that ‘farmers worked too hard to make this crop’ will often follow. Do you think it’s going too far to refer as much as losing eye sight?

However, if you stretch your thoughts as for how much one single grain can yield at the harvest it makes sense to note the value of a grain.
Here you can also be reminded the sense of the word ‘Mottainai’ which was widely introduced to the world by Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2004.

Let me introduce you more examples randomly

If you have a wish for abundance or beauty of the hair, you should strive to consume a lot of seaweeds.

If you caught a hearse in your sight, you would like to fold and hide your thumbs to avoid your parents to die!! － I don’t miss to do this.

It is an auspicious sign if you find a tea stalk floating upright in your cup of tea, which I’ve never experienced in my life… Simply the tea of excellent quality doesn’t contain any stalks.

Putting a snake’s cast-off skin in your wallet makes you rich.

It is also said that you will be rich if you have big earlobes. Have you?